The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge
in a six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire,
carried her over the ground the next morning with a springy tread.
Her sense of being properly appreciated on her own native soil
seemed to brighten the atmosphere and herbage around her, as the
glowworm's lamp irradiates the grass. Thus she moved along, a
vessel of emotion going to empty itself on she knew not what.

Twenty minutes' walking through copses, over a stile, and along an
upland lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom
of which Hintock House appeared immediately beneath her eye. To
describe it as standing in a hollow would not express the
situation of the manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding
that the hole was full of beauty. From the spot which Grace had
reached a stone could easily have been thrown over or into, the
birds'-nested chimneys of the mansion. Its walls were surmounted
by a battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite
visible behind it, with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights,
together with incised letterings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers
thereon.

The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation
of Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich
snuff-colored freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the
walls, where not overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated
with lichen of every shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its
nearness to the ground, till, below the plinth, it merged in moss.

Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of
whose trees were above the level of the chimneys. The
corresponding high ground on which Grace stood was richly grassed,
with only an old tree here and there. A few sheep lay about,
which, as they ruminated, looked quietly into the bedroom windows.
The situation of the house, prejudicial to humanity, was a
stimulus to vegetation, on which account an endless shearing of
the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a continual lopping of
trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built in times when human
constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous
was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the
insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an
ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the
fragility to which these have declined. The highest architectural
cunning could have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and
salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done little to make
it unpicturesque. It was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to
inspire the painter and poet of still life--if they did not suffer
too much from the relaxing atmosphere--and to draw groans from the
gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a
zigzag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope.
The exterior of the house had been familiar to her from her
childhood, but she had never been inside, and the approach to
knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experience. It was
with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she recollected
that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a few days
before this time that lady had been accompanied in her comings,
stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt;
latterly, however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was
supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate.
Being presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this
deprivation might possibly account for her sudden interest in
Grace.

Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall
when Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass
doors between them. She came forward with a smile on her face,
and told the young girl it was good of her to come.

"Ah! you have noticed those," she said, seeing that Grace's eyes
were attracted by some curious objects against the walls. "They
are man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and
spring-guns and such articles, collecting them from all his
neighbors. He knew the histories of all these--which gin had
broken a man's leg, which gun had killed a man. That one, I
remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of
a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done,
went that way himself, received the charge in the lower part of
his body, and died of the wound. I don't like them here, but I've
never yet given directions for them to be taken away." She added,
playfully, "Man-traps are of rather ominous significance where a
person of our sex lives, are they not?"

Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one
which her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating.

"They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time
happily past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied
designs of these instruments of torture--some with semi-circular
jaws, some with rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth,
but a few with none, so that their jaws looked like the blank gums
of old age.

"Well, we must not take them too seriously," said Mrs. Charmond,
with an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When
she had shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she
deemed likely to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings,
ivories, miniatures, and so on--always with a mien of listlessness
which might either have been constitutional, or partly owing to
the situation of the place--they sat down to an early cup of tea.

"Will you pour it out, please? Do," she said, leaning back in her
chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond
eyes--those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early
Italian art--became longer, and her voice more languishing. She
showed that oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most
frequent in women of darker complexion and more lymphatic
temperament than Mrs. Charmond's was; who lingeringly smile their
meanings to men rather than speak them, who inveigle rather than
prompt, and take advantage of currents rather than steer.

"I am the most inactive woman when I am here," she said. "I think
sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but
float about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that
cannot be really my destiny, and I must struggle against such
fancies."

"I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion--it is quite sad! I wish
I could tend you and make you very happy."

There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound
of Grace's voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their
customary reservations in talking to her. "It is tender and kind
of you to feel that," said Mrs. Charmond. "Perhaps I have given
you the notion that my languor is more than it really is. But
this place oppresses me, and I have a plan of going abroad a good
deal. I used to go with a relative, but that arrangement has
dropped through." Regarding Grace with a final glance of
criticism, she seemed to make up her mind to consider the young
girl satisfactory, and continued: "Now I am often impelled to
record my impressions of times and places. I have often thought
of writing a 'New Sentimental Journey.' But I cannot find energy
enough to do it alone. When I am at different places in the south
of Europe I feel a crowd of ideas and fancies thronging upon me
continually, but to unfold writing-materials, take up a cold steel
pen, and put these impressions down systematically on cold, smooth
paper--that I cannot do. So I have thought that if I always could
have somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might
dictate any ideas that come into my head. And directly I had made
your acquaintance the other day it struck me that you would suit
me so well. Would you like to undertake it? You might read to
me, too, if desirable. Will you think it over, and ask your
parents if they are willing?"

"Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the
Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers--not a great many miles from
here."

"I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I
was never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs.
Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation.
Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was
one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable,
wandering weltburgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about--
a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. "It is
of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than
what his family is," she said, "if he is going to practise upon us
as a surgeon. Have you seen him?"

"Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when
I come back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man--if
he is clever--in one's own parish. I get dreadfully nervous
sometimes, living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so
far to send to. No doubt you feel Hintock to be a great change
after watering-place life."

"I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its
disadvantages." Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of
the attendant circumstances.

They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease
by her entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a
woman not to know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive
young girl who would probably be very quick to discern it, was to
demolish her dignity rather than to establish it in that young
girl's eyes. So, being violently possessed with her idea of
making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready and waiting at her
own door, she took great pains to win her confidence at starting.

Just before Grace's departure the two chanced to pause before a
mirror which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so
as to bring into prominence their resemblances and their
contrasts. Both looked attractive as glassed back by the faithful
reflector; but Grace's countenance had the effect of making Mrs.
Charmond appear more than her full age. There are complexions
which set off each other to great advantage, and there are those
which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor
unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond
fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a cursory
remark of her companion's. However, she parted from her young
friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know
as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had
suggested.

When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope
she looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the
door, meditatively regarding her.

Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys,
Winterborne's thoughts ran upon Grace's announced visit to Hintock
House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of
the way? Something told him that she might not, on such an
occasion, care for his company.

He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden
next day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty
pride in the event. He wondered if her father's ambition, which
had purchased for her the means of intellectual light and culture
far beyond those of any other native of the village, would conduce
to the flight of her future interests above and away from the
local life which was once to her the movement of the world.

Nevertheless, he had her father's permission to win her if he
could; and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon
to a crisis, if he ever hoped to do so. If she should think
herself too good for him, he could let her go and make the best of
his loss; but until he had really tested her he could not say that
she despised his suit. The question was how to quicken events
towards an issue.

He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as
any would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her
parents to come as chief guests.

These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a
slight knocking at his front door. He descended the path and
looked out, and beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work.

"Why didn't you come, Mr. Winterborne?" she said. "I've been
waiting there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to
find you."

What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-
trees to be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared
by the wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with
his own hands. He had a marvellous power of making trees grow.
Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly,
there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or
beech that he was operating on, so that the roots took hold of the
soil in a few days. When, on the other hand, any of the
journeymen planted, although they seemed to go through an
identically similar process, one quarter of the trees would die
away during the ensuing August.

Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at
present, he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in
which he had no personal interest. Marty, who turned her hand to
anything, was usually the one who performed the part of keeping
the trees in a perpendicular position while he threw in the mould.

He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further
to proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was
close to the way-side along which Grace must pass on her return
from Hintock House.

"You've a cold in the head, Marty," he said, as they walked.
"That comes of cutting off your hair."

"I suppose it do. Yes; I've three headaches going on in my head
at the same time."

"Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my
eyes, and a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I
came out, for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like
anything if I was not there."

The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne's
fingers were endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading
the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress,
under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their
proper directions for growth. He put most of these roots towards
the south-west; for, he said, in forty years' time, when some
great gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees will require
the strongest holdfast on that side to stand against it and not
fall.

"How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are
lying down they don't sigh at all," said Marty.

She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her
finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not
to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled--
probably long after the two planters should be felled themselves.

"It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh because
they are very sorry to begin life in earnest--just as we be."

"Just as we be?" He looked critically at her. "You ought not to
feel like that, Marty."

Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they
planted on through a great part of the day, almost without another
word. Winterborne's mind ran on his contemplated evening-party,
his abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty's
presence beside him. From the nature of their employment, in
which he handled the spade and she merely held the tree, it
followed that he got good exercise and she got none. But she was
an heroic girl, and though her out-stretched hand was chill as a
stone, and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she
would not complain while he was disposed to continue work. But
when he paused she said, "Mr. Winterborne, can I run down the lane
and back to warm my feet?"

"Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening anew to her existence.
"Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season.
Now I warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You
had no business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost
right. Look here, cut off home at once."

"Marty, I tell you to go home," said he, peremptorily. "I can
manage to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or
something."

She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the
orchard a little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went
after her.

"Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm
yourself in your own way, I don't care."

When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman's dress
through the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road.
It was Grace at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs.
Charmond. He threw down the tree he was planting, and was about
to break through the belt of holly when he suddenly became aware
of the presence of another man, who was looking over the hedge on
the opposite side of the way upon the figure of the unconscious
Grace. He appeared as a handsome and gentlemanly personage of six
or eight and twenty, and was quizzing her through an eye-glass.
Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let his glass drop
with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge, and walked
away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that this
must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed
through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting
object of their contemplation.